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Former president John Mahama has expressed his readiness to debate the current government on investments made into the real sectors of the economy.
According to him, that should be the subject for debate because it leads to jobs creation. Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has challenged the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to name just one social intervention program they implemented in their eight-year stay in government.
Addressing members of the NPP at the party’s Annual National Delegates Conference in Accra, Dr. Bawumia said the NDC, priding itself as a social democratic party, has the abysmal record of not implementing a single social intervention project in their eight years in government between 2009 and 2016, and dared them again to name just one.
However, speaking on the issue for the first time, the NDC flagbearer said that is immaterial compared to investments into real sectors of the economy. He stressed that social intervention programs rather take from the public purse, adding little to the improvement of lives.
“You must assure the people of jobs; if people are working and getting money what would they need free for if they can afford to pay. And somebody says, let’s have a competition on social intervention; social interventions are consumption. They should say let’s have a competition in who invested more in the real sectors than the other. We were doing 4.7 percent of GDP investment in the real sector, today they can hardly achieve 3 percent,” Mr. Mahama said during a meeting with the Association of Road Contractors.
He added: “All the projects we did, all the roads and interchange; everything, the new Kumasi airport, Terminal 3 all those things we did with 54 billion Cedis. Today, in three and a half years, 140 billion Cedis has been spent and they say they can’t pay you two billion; it is deliberate, this government does not intend to pay you. And so, my brothers and sisters, it is obvious that the decision not to pay you is political; I cannot ascribe any reason to it because they have a mistaken believe that everybody who worked under John Mahama and NDC must be politically affiliated.”
Social intervention programs have become key in the current political landscape, with many wondering why the governing NPP which is perceived to be from a capitalist orientation, interested in the introduction of social intervention – National Health Insurance Scheme and Free SHS topmost- which is of a socialist characteristics of which the opposition NDC’s prides itself.
Source: Daily Mail GH
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